


recognize a kindred wilderness

by escherzo



Series: by the inscrutable decree of Providence [5]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Beholding Avatar Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Domestic Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Kid Fic, Lonely Avatar Martin Blackwood, M/M, No Apocalypse, Set in Episodes 159-160 | Scottish Safehouse Period (The Magnus Archives), Trans Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, can be read as standalone but would encourage reading the series!, the latest installment of i write some sappy nonsense bullshit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:48:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27299734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/escherzo/pseuds/escherzo
Summary: He wraps them all in close, and the warmth surrounds him, a little nest of his family. They're quiet for a long moment.“If you look there,” Jon says, reaching out to take Pearl's tiny hand in his own and point it towards a brilliant blue-white star, “you can seeLyra, the lyre of Orpheus; it was said to be created from a turtle shell by Hermes. The music he played with it was so great that it could charm even the rocks and the trees. Just like your voice. Isn't that right, Martin?”“Exactly right,” Martin says, smiling down at her.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Series: by the inscrutable decree of Providence [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1973212
Comments: 17
Kudos: 89





	recognize a kindred wilderness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Maiden_of_the_Moon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maiden_of_the_Moon/gifts).



> If you're reading this as a standalone - the cliffs notes of the series is that Jon and Martin are in safehouse-verse and are both making full use of their avatar powers to feed (there's a lot more of the backstory on that in earlier installments) and also have a baby daughter named Pearl that Jon gave birth to, who is a couple degrees to the left of human on the human to avatar scale. They also have a cat, Ensign Byron K. Wordsworth. Title from the Scarlet Letter, in keeping with the previous fic in the series.
> 
> unbetaed, 80% soppiness by volume, please enjoy a textual representation of me taking my id-spaghetti and throwing it at a wall. Also I may have cribbed most of the kid dialogue from my two year old nephew.

_“The truth seems to be, however, that the mother-forest, and these wild things which it nourished, all recognised a kindred wilderness in the human child.”_

*

“It's a big world out there, Pearly-girly,” Martin says, keeping his voice soft. 

The pile of blankets below them shifts as Jon settles in closer, half-propped up on an elbow as he watches Pearl's tiny chest rise and fall from where she's cradled against Martin's chest. Sometimes she looks up, bleary-eyed, into the vast emptiness of the night sky, dark as pitch and perfectly clear, a speckled carpet of shining stars and the dusty white of the Milky Way overhead, but her eyelids are drooping, the vibrant green of her eyes hidden under long, pale lashes. She reaches up and rubs at her eyes with a chubby fist, yawning. 

Overhead, the stars twinkle, and Jon sighs as he reaches out to rest a hand over her chest and feel the tiny thump-thump-thump of her heartbeat. Even now, after nearly a year, he can't help but think about how small she is. How fragile, and how strong. She's cuddled in against Martin, content in her pile of blankets, paying no attention to the meteor shower promised tonight, and in a year or two, she won't remember this moment, but Jon hopes she remembers this, at least—her family surrounding her. How she was loved from the day Jon knew she would _be_ at all. 

The wind carries the faint sound of an owl in the distance, hooting and then making a sound that half-sounds like a laugh, and then after a moment, the answering sound of another. Finding each other in the night. 

Jon props himself up a little higher so he can lean in and kiss Martin, and Pearl yawns again as Martin shifts to meet him, reaching out to cling tighter to him as he moves, and he absently reaches down to tuck her in, nestling the blankets around her where they've started to slip loose. 

There is a faint chill in the night air, even in the middle of summer like this, and Jon reaches for the extra blanket he brought with him when he came to join Martin, sprawled out on his back on a pile of soft blankets in the yard out front of the cabin with Pearl on his chest, watching the stars. He wraps them all in close, and the warmth surrounds him, a little nest of his family. They're quiet for a long moment. 

“If you look there,” Jon says, reaching out to take Pearl's tiny hand in his own and point it towards a brilliant blue-white star, “you can see _Lyra_ , the lyre of Orpheus; it was said to be created from a turtle shell by Hermes. The music he played with it was so great that it could charm even the rocks and the trees. Just like your voice. Isn't that right, Martin?”

“Exactly right,” Martin says, smiling down at her. 

She blinks up at it, a faint smattering of vibrant green eyes haloing her shock of white hair like an afterimage as she takes it all in, and she makes a sound that Jon thinks might be the word _bright_. She's not quite talking yet, but she's close; he calls her his bright little girl every morning as he combs the tangles out of her hair, humming a little song to keep her distracted as the knots fade away.

“And over there,” Martin says, entwining his fingers with theirs and moving them a bit to the left, “is Cygnus, the swan.” Martin knows the constellations because Jon taught him; he didn't have this, with the family he grew up with, and he looks down at Pearl with such naked love in his eyes as he begins to tell the story that it makes Jon's chest hurt. “--Oh! I think I saw a shooting star, look, over there!” 

There is a faint streak of bright light across the sky, and then another, and Pearl takes them in with the solemnity of exhaustion before her eyes drift closed again. Martin holds himself very still, and for a long moment, he and Jon watch the sky rain fire together, hands still entwined with their daughter's.

“Sometimes the Perseids are referred to as the tears of St. Lawrence,” Jon whispers into the stillness, “suspended in the sky until they rain down on his feast day. He was said to have been burned alive on a gridiron; the shooting stars are the sparks.” 

Martin takes his eyes away from the sky for a moment to give him a look, caught somewhere between exasperated and fond; it's one he's used to. “What, they _grilled_ him?”

Jon nods. “He was said to have said, "I'm well done on this side. Turn me over!" More likely he was decapitated instead, but there is a gridiron in a church in the Minor Basilica of St. Lawrence in Lucina that's supposed to be a holy relic because of him.” 

“We have got to get you to a trivia night when she's older,” Martin says, shaking his head. “Holy griddles. Honestly.” 

“We should head in soon,” Jon says, sighing as he rests his head on Martin's shoulder. Pearl's chest rises and falls slowly, and she makes a soft little noise in her sleep, hands curling and uncurling into fists. “Should get her to bed.”

“Just a little longer,” Martin says into the stillness, and Jon smiles and nods.

*

Martin sets three cups down onto the rickety old table in the front room, and somewhere on the edge of Jon's awareness is the sound of a tape recorder clicking on as he takes a sip and then asks the man across from him, “what happened to you? You can tell us. It's alright, David. People get lost up here all the time. We understand.” 

David Allen, 37, who went traveling alone after losing his job until he took a wrong turn on a back road through the mountains and spent two days wandering in a fog so thick it seemed to swallow the world. Martin smiles at Jon from behind him, and it's an easy, sated smile. 

“Did I tell you my name?” David begins, his voice unsteady, and his hand shakes as he lifts the cup of tea to his lips. “I—I lost my job three weeks ago. I'd been there eight years. Eight years, and they threw me away like I was nothing. I'd been the last of the older ones—you know how tech is, I suspect, you get over thirty and all people want to do is throw you away, and by the time they pushed me out it I didn't know anyone anymore, and all I wanted to do was to be _alone_ , you know--” 

His eyes are wide and locked on Jon's as he speaks, but out of the corner of his eye Jon can see Pearl crawling up to Martin. She wobbles to her knees, unsteady and gripping Martin's trouser leg hard as she pulls herself upwards to standing, swaying back and forth, and her eyes have gone startlingly bright. Martin reaches down and scoops her into his arms, her arms wrapped tight around his neck and his hands under her seat, holding her against his chest as the spectral eyes that halo her blink into existence and all turn to face the man. He holds perfectly still, unaware of anything but the words coming from his mouth but knowing, somehow, that behind him, he is being _watched_ , prey caught between predators on all sides. 

“And then all of a sudden I was out, and I was here. My car's just down the road—I don't remember _driving_ here.”

“But here you are,” Jon says, holding out his arms for Pearl, and Martin brings her over. She settles into his lap and presses her face into his chest, and he rubs soothing circles on her back, patting it to help the fear settle properly. “It'll be alright, David. If you keep going down the road a little while longer you'll make it into town; they've got supplies and petrol and a phone if you want to call someone.” 

“Thank you,” David says, staring down into his tea. “How old is she?”

“Eleven months,” Jon says, unable to keep the pride out of his voice, as always. “Not quite walking yet, but getting close.” 

David smiles. “That's nice,” he says, and then she turns to look at him and he shudders, involuntary, and Jon Knows he's not sure why something about her makes him feel terribly afraid, and ashamed of being afraid. “I should go.”

“Good luck,” Jon says, and Martin ushers David out the door. “How was it?”

“He wasn't as—lost as some of them are,” Martin says, settling into the chair the man vacated. “But he'll be alright. Just needs to get into a better industry.” 

“Mm,” Jon agrees, and Pearl sighs in contentment, letting out a burp, one spectral eye opening and then closing above her head with a little pop like an air bubble. 

It's that night, freshly fed with raw fear instead of an old, stale statement, that she walks for the first time. Martin is half-crouched on the floor next to the fireplace with Jon opposite her, holding her up with both of her hands raised. The room is full of warmth and life, and Ensign perches on the couch, surveying the scene with a critical eye, an ever-watchful guardian over her chosen human as Pearl looks up with big eyes at Jon and then at Martin. Martin beckons to her and she takes one guided step and then another, and then all at once wiggles out of Jon's grip and takes two great steps forward before toppling over in surprise at her own bravery. Her lip wobbles. 

“Shh, shh, it's alright,” Martin says, crawling over to her, and he's not bothering to hide the way his eyes are beading with tears. “You did so good! It's alright.” Ensign leaps off the couch and gives Martin a look before rubbing herself against Pearl's side, and Pearl sniffles and reaches out to pat clumsily at her back. 

There is a great lump in Jon's throat he can't swallow past, and after a long moment he manages to croak out, “she did it.” 

“Yeah,” Martin says, wiping away a tear. “Yeah, she did. God, we're going to have to baby-proof _so much more_ of the house now.” 

The lump in Jon's throat acquires an aftertaste of dread. “Oh, god,” he says. 

*

“Do you ever, like. Do you ever stop and think like, _this is forever_ now? This is our life. We can just stay here and live and she's just going to be—she's going to be ours forever?”

“Yes,” Jon says, watching as Martin paints the blocks he cut from an old branch that fell in the last windstorm and then lovingly, carefully sanded free of every splinter. They're sunshine yellow and cherry red, and all he can think of is imagining them in her tiny hands, the way she'll bang them together and laugh and yell, “boom!” as they fall over. Boom is her new favorite game; she tries to topple Jon and Martin both and sometimes they pretend to fall over, because she is always very impressed when she can manage it, but mostly it's what she likes to yell when Martin drops something in the kitchen or one of Jon's books slips out of his hands. 

She's asleep on the couch, curled up into a little nest of blankets and warm from the fire with one arm wrapped around Ensign's middle, both of their chests rising and falling slow and contented. 

“Yeah,” Martin says, seeing where he's looking. “It's just—it's just a lot, you know?”

He does. Some days, it's all he can think about. 

“I love you,” he says, instead of any of that, and even today, when the lingering fog is still surrounding Martin so much that the cold radiates from him, Martin's smile is the warmest thing he's ever seen.

The important thing, in all of this, is love. 

*

“You had a purple coat last time,” Pearl informs Helen as the sunshine yellow door that is sometimes on the side of her bedroom wall creaks open. 

“I did!” Helen confirms, delighted, and the walls of the room swim a little as she steps into the room and does a little twirl to make Pearl's eyes light up with delight as her rainbow dress turns into a technicolor blur. Her coat is blue today. “How's my favorite niece?”

Pearl thinks for a moment, plopping her thumb into her mouth and sucking on it as she contemplates the question. “'m hungry,” she decides on, eventually, and Helen's eyes brighten further. 

“I brought snacks,” Helen says, and opens the door again. “Come on out, Eustace!” To Pearl, she says, “awful name, Eustace, can't imagine what his parents were thinking. He's going to tell you a story!” 

Pearl giggles. Behind Helen, a rail-thin man, somewhere in his fifties and with a badly-tailored suit mussed with stress and exertion, totters out. His eyes are very large, and his thinning hair is pressed slick to his scalp with stress; he sways from side to side in the room, and eventually collapses into the weathered old blue armchair that Jon and Pearl sit in when Jon reads her stories. 

“What story?” Pearl asks the man, and his eyes go wider still as they meet hers. He tries to put a hand over his mouth as the words start spilling out and Helen rests a long, sharp hand on his shoulder and looks down at him, shaking her head. 

He tells her a story. 

*

“ _Really?_ ”

“She's fine, I made sure she was fed, and she got a nice bedtime story. Can't imagine what you're complaining about.”

Martin levels Helen with a stare. “Can't imagine,” he mutters, rolling his eyes. 

“Oh don't be like _that_ ,” she says, lounging on his couch like she owns the place. “Can't I check in on my favorite niece?”

“Martin, who are you talking t-- _oh_.” 

“Don't you start too,” Helen says. Ensign gives her a critical eye and then deigns to settle in beside her on the couch, and her hands are blunt when she reaches down to give the cat a scritch under the chin. Jon sighs and starts taking off his gardening gloves. 

“She's a bit young to be taking statements. We were going to wait,” he says.

“Well, she can't very well read them yet, can she? Maybe I wanted her to have something to eat that isn't regurgitated out of one of you like she's a baby bird.” Helen pauses for a moment, and there's something very different in her face when she looks back up at Jon again. Closer to the way she looked when she was newly Helen. “... Helen wanted a family, you know.”

Jon's heart does a funny thing. “What happened?”

“She got divorced, and then I ate her.” Helen settles back further onto the couch, which bends and warps strangely with the weight of her. “We don't all get what we want.” 

Pearl stumbles out of her room, rubbing sleep from her eyes, her white curls a riotous mess and her pyjama pants half-sliding down so her walk is more clumsy diapered waddle than anything else, and when she sees Helen is still in the cabin, her eyes light up, and it's this, more than anything, that makes Jon sigh and say, “oh, all right,” and not protest any further when Helen and Pearl settle to the floor to build towers out of Pearl's blocks. 

Helen's creations are structurally impossible and make Jon's head hurt to look at, and the finger puppets on her fingers that definitely _did not_ exist a moment ago that she makes toddle through the new block buildings are worse, but Pearl smiles and knocks her head against Helen's side and complains that she tickles, and Jon remembers the fear when he was pregnant with her, the sense that he didn't _deserve_ any of it, that he wasn't human enough for it.

“... Just be careful with her, please,” he says to the two of them.

“I will,” Helen says. 

“Okay,” Pearl says, and pats Helen's arm.

*

“Are you sure she's asleep?” Jon whispers.

“I'm sure,” Martin whispers back, pulling him into a kiss, wet and openmouthed, and he swallows the sound as Jon whimpers into his mouth, legs spreading wider. “God, we have got to get a less creaky bed.” 

*

“You have to pull the weeds up by the neck,” Pearl informs Jon primly, hands on her hips as she surveys the garden. He wipes the back of his hand across his forehead and settles in to continue trying to wrangle the potatoes, and she plops down beside him and reaches in, her fingers closing around the base of a bit of grass before tugging it upwards. 

“Good job,” Jon says, and then has to stop his weeding entirely and pull her hands out from where she's sunk both of them into the dirt. It's already going to be a bath night, there's no avoiding that; her knees and arms are covered in dirt, and she's been traipsing around in a diaper and nothing else all day, sweltering in the heat with the rest of them. Even with Martin allowing a bit of the fog to close around the two of them has only helped so much. Plants don't like it in the Lonely; Martin has theories about it, mostly centering around the idea that plants seem to like when people talk to them, and so it's a complicated dance between trying to stay cool and trying to keep everything from wilting. “Did your papa teach you that?”

Pearl nods solemnly and sticks her fingers in her mouth, hardly seeming to notice how dirt-smeared they are, and Jon wrinkles his nose.

It strikes him, more often than not, how much she really does seem like a normal child, despite everything. She's at an age where she's wildly opinionated about the world and soaking everything in at amazing speed; she repeats half of what they say and tells them _no_ when she thinks they're doing something wrong and has discovered a passionate love for the chocolate biscuits Martin buys sometimes as a real-food treat. She loves the cat, but plays too rough with her sometimes. She and Martin go on long walks to go see the cows, and she has strong opinions about which one is her favorite. 

They've struggled with being able to bring her into town; she can't stay isolated up here in the cabin with them her entire life, and her only other social interaction being Helen, or rarely Basira, who still isn't quite sure what to do with her and isn't much for children, isn't the sort of life he wants for her. But when she goes into town she walks up to people and asks them things like _is your brother sick?_ when the person in question was worrying after their brother and absolutely had not mentioned it, or asks _why?_ to questions in ways that people can't actually stop themselves from answering. She's barely over two years old; saying strange things is something no one thinks much of, in small doses at least, but—it's going to become more obvious over time. Sometimes she tells people about bits of stories she's heard from statements. And it's a small village. People talk. 

Agnes Montague was born into being an avatar, and she spent her whole life wishing for something else. Jon tries to focus on picking bugs off the potatoes and dropping them into the jar of alcohol he's keeping carefully out of Pearl's reach as she toddles around her domain, gently patting the plants and occasionally trying to yank up a weed; he tries not to think about Agnes. 

“I can _hear_ you thinking,” Martin says from behind him, stepping out of the mist, and Jon startles. “Everything okay?” 

Jon sighs and nods his head in Pearl's direction. She's gotten distracted from gardening and is instead making soup—gathering sticks and leaves and bits of dirt and dropping it into one of the buckets they have for gathering rainwater for the washing. She never does anything with the soup, except for occasionally drop her toys in it, and every so often they have to dump it out after it's started to fester for too long. 

“I, I just worry, you know.”

“I know.” Martin sits down in the dirt beside him and wraps an arm around his shoulders. “I think Aila thinks we've adopted one of the fey folk and not noticed. She's tried to give me charms with my groceries twice now.”

“It isn't going to be easy for her,” Jon says softly. “No matter what we do.”

“No,” Martin agrees. “But she has parents who love her and each other and she knows that. That's a lot more than some people get, right?” _That's more than I got._

“Still. Good lord, what do we do when she's old enough for school?” Jon sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. 

“Yeah,” Martin says, pulling Jon in a little tighter against him. “Pearl, honey, come here.” 

Pearl turns around and smiles at them, and she runs towards them both with arms outstretched, her white curls gleaming bright in the summer sun. She trips over her own feet just as she gets to Jon, and they both reach out at once to catch her, ending up in a sprawl of limbs with her splayed out on top of them, her elbow in Jon's gut, knocking the wind out of him. “I love you,” he tells her once he's gotten his breath back, brushing her hair out of her eyes. 

“Love you,” she tells them both, and the summer sun is unbearably warm with all of them pressed together like this, but Jon can't bring himself to care. Her smile is so bright. He is filled with a rush of fierce protectiveness; he would tear down the world to keep her safe, and he knows Martin would do the same. He wraps his arms around her and holds her close, and she wriggles and accidentally headbutts him in the chin and laughs when he yelps. 

“Gentle,” Martin says, trying to steady her, but he's laughing a little. He meets Jon's eyes, his face full of soft affection, and Jon smiles helplessly. 

It's never going to be easy, he tells himself, as they lie there in a heap in the garden, half-crushing the turnip plants, but they've made it this far.

All they can do is keep loving.


End file.
